Transcendence
by grassyhyuuga
Summary: (Hokage, fire shadow — don't they realise you need one to cast the light, and another to cast the shadow?)


**Notes**:

_This piece can be read as either compliant with canon up to Chapter 669 or compliant with the whole of canon so far. It is a prequel to a larger planned universe but can definitely stand on its own._

_Many thanks to PikaCheeka for the beta and Starfire201 for a grammar read-through! Any remaining mistakes are mine alone._

* * *

His first memory is of water, a secluded stream, half-dead trees clinging onto gritty banks. The sun pours over their backs and seeps into the black of their clothes.

Even at three, Madara does not feel the heat.

The water runs red, smoke-wisps of blood drifting downstream as his father cleans his sword.

"Your sword will be your weapon, not a plaything." Uchiha Tajima does not know his son at all, so Madara stops himself from correcting this stranger — he has never played a day in his life. "You must take care of it above all else."

He nods, says "yes, father" as is expected of him and does not reach up for Tajima's hand when they travel back to the camp.

* * *

His fifth year is chaos.

Izuna arrives during a spike in hostilities with the Akimichi. Their new armour shines ebony-black and, somehow, resists heat. Two days after giving birth their mother (stooped with fatigue, sparse hair cropped just below the chin, spread too thin to cover the gaping hole that is Madara let alone all of her children) returns to work in the medical tents.

Madara changes diapers while she changes pus-soaked bandages. He plasters scraped knees and puts his sister to bed at night, plays for the first time in his short life to distract his siblings from the screams of dying men.

He knows by now, is practical enough not to care, that he holds no love for his parents. They are not _his_, but Izuna is, and he is more than content.

* * *

Uchiha Tajima is not a lovable man, but Izuna as a child, just like Izuna the adult, has nothing in his body except tenacity and compassion.

(He manages to achieve the impossible, because whatever his shortcomings he will never lack determination.)

Madara burns to see his brother slighted by their father, so he does the only thing he knows how and teaches him to be strong, to hurt instead of being hurt. In the meantime, he ignores Tajima's praises for the deadliness of his skill, scorching them into ashes with the intensity of his indifference.

* * *

Seeking water has become a compulsion. Nothing except a running stream or Izuna's company can cool his constant frustration. It boils hottest on the battlefield, the futility of it all bubbling in his blood even as he spills others', twists steel into flesh and organ and wrings out every last drop of life.

The presence of another halts his steps. It is a boy, slim and tanned.

Usually Madara would turn away — he has never gotten along with children his age — but for a moment a beam of sun brushes across the boy's face and his eyes glow like coals.

He steps from the shadows, drawing on the imperiousness of one who has dealt death with his hands, and demands to know his name.

(They part ways at dusk, but Madara returns half an hour later and watches the last of the light recede into the horizon. For once, the evening breeze chills his arms.)

* * *

Hashirama ignites and evaporates him at the same time. The resulting steam is potent and heady, and before long the other boy becomes his first (last) friend. He still gets irritated at Hashirama, but it is the kind of irritation one feels for the sun at dawn for drawing one out of slumber.

Somehow, they fit together, jagged steel and polished wood.

He has lived in the dark so long, been the sole source of illumination of his own life, fumbling through by burning himself—

—Hashirama hands him a torch and offers a supportive smile, points out the mouth of the cave with an excited shout. _We can reach it_. Optimism swims in his dark eyes. He seems to pull a coil of rope out of thin air, and his shoes clack as he tugs Madara along. _We can climb this_. And Madara believes him, we _will_, and when they do Izuna will not live in a world where boys kill and girls are sold for supplies, where mothers are walking corpses and siblings are cremated.

* * *

_Do you know why we wear black? _ The words of his father echo, unbidden, in his skull. _The Uchiha wear black because it hides the bloodstains of our enemies._

Izuna's blood dots the white bedsheets like petals. The damage to his lungs is irreparable, and he will eventually, slowly, drown in his own blood.

Madara cannot keep still, ricocheting back and forth in the limited space. What is the use of power and skill when he cannot save his own brother? On the battlefield he sees all, the entire world glazed with red, and wields his sword like the key to hell. Yet here, by his brother's deathbed, he is as mortal and helpless as any.

He finds the true answer to his father's question more than a decade late. _Black is the colour of mourning_.

* * *

He sees little point in peace or that silly, conflict-free world he had dreamed up once with a golden-skinned boy by the riverbank. Izuna's death and Izuna's eyes set him alight, and he fights the Senju feverishly.

The gratification he feels at every wince on Senju Tobirama's face is indescribable.

Unlike the orange-red flames of his youth, the white-blue of his molten hatred is immune to Hashirama's honeyed words.

* * *

That moment when Hashirama turns his blade on himself, dirt-caked hands poised to push, Madara is eleven again, burnt out and too weak to even contemplate killing his best friend.

_Forgive me, Izuna_ .

The capitulation is the easy part. He closes his (Izuna's) eyes and allows Hashirama to help him to his feet. What follows is a flurry of artificial diplomacy and perfecting his porcelain politician's mask and pretending he no longer wishes to slit Tobirama's throat.

* * *

They reach a truce of sorts, where the tug-and-push of childhood affection and adult disdain balances to create something close to their ill-fated companionship.

The rage dies down to a simmer, and he finds he cannot use it as a shield against Hashirama's charm.

It would be like trying to block out the sun, impossible, undesirable.

They fall back into orbit, round and round. No one else can withstand the force of his gravity, either streaking by as comets or crashing haplessly like meteors. Only Hashirama, with his relentless strength, is his celestial equal. Hashirama stays.

* * *

It is just them, the way Madara prefers it, the only way he can stand it.

He would not consider himself a poetic soul, but he sees the silhouettes of a pair of boys, skipping stones and trading hopes, veiled from the rest of the world by a copse of trees.

"Hidden in the leaves."

Hashirama bares his teeth in a grin. The left side of his mouth turns while the right curls, and this is how Madara knows the smile to be genuine, not the saccharine-ivory one bestowed upon strangers.

"I like it."

And so starts the beginning of the end.

* * *

He turns his head at the sound of footfalls, eyes blazing. A dark head peeps out from behind a tree trunk, and he has to give the child credit for her foolhardy courage. Grown men have quailed under his gaze. She's done well to conceal herself from him for a time — _perhaps not being noticed is a skill of all unexceptional children_, he thinks, recalling the surprising stealth of his second brother, who had been frail from birth.

"You're father's friend."

He studies Hashirama's daughter, notes the formal inflections in her voice, strains his ears to hear the fierceness of her parentage. Truly, she is Mito's daughter, yet she inherits not a lick of her mother's fire, in her appearance or otherwise.

"You should not be out here." He wants to sound stern but the words roll apathetically from his tongue.

The girl just looks up at him with dark (Hashirama's) eyes, and he reminds himself that though she lacks talent, she is a child of war and formidable shinobi.

"Sorry."

She is not sorry at all and flits off before he can reply.

This time the sneer cannot be contained. Hashirama always soliloquises about the future, a shining future for the shining children of Konoha.

Madara hates children.

He had built the village for himself, for Hashirama, for Izuna's eyes. Konohagakure is their creation — they literally grew it from the earth, moulded it like clay through diplomacy. It is not for anyone else, least of all anyone unborn. The day they finished carving Hashirama's visage onto the cliff face was the day he had become a living god.

(Madara wants his face on there, too, not because he wishes to lead the people or desires to be recognised. It is only right, fitting, that they are immortalised together, side-by-side. Once upon a time, two boys had had a dream, and though one boy stopped cutting his hair and stole his brother's eyes, they found one anther again and became divine architects.)

* * *

They love him, the people, follow him with bright eyes and anoint him leader.

They tolerate Madara as a begrudging favour to their Hokage, and Madara really, really does not care. They are little more than sycophantic sheep. He does not concern himself with the opinions of his inferiors.

(Hokage, _fire shadow _— don't they realise you need one to cast the light, and another to cast the shadow?)

* * *

He never had the temperament to be a shepherd, so his Uchiha flock wanders, seeking other pastures.

Where before, in war, they had followed his strength, instinctively understanding he would drive away any predators, they now shrink from it. With peace comes complaisance, softness, and Madara is a hard man.

Fewer and fewer children activate their Sharingan at an acceptable age. Some hail it as a welcome sign of stability and build out of stone, not wood (_what if there is a fire? _they explain) — as if the Uchiha are a clan founded upon anything but fire and blood.

Eyes swirling, he sees clearer than ever. His clansmen are docile lambs cloaked in black, and he alone remains a wolf in sheepskin.

* * *

It is just as well that Tobirama mistrusts him — it proves he is, at least, not stupid.

Madara prides himself on being a man bigger than petty motives like revenge. He is meant for grander, greater things.

(But, he would gladly grant an exception for the murderer of Izuna, to smite the man out of existence with a single hand sign, to smile at the speck of charred earth that had once been Senju Tobirama.)

Still, it is not Tobirama's suspicion which strikes him, but Hashirama's inability to see beyond the borders of the Land of Fire that cuts him to the quick. Perhaps he had been mistaken, and Hashirama was no kindred spirit after all.

He cannot be wrong. _Wrong_ would mean that Izuna's sacrifice had been in vain, that he should have allowed Hashirama to pay the price of his death in blood, that — no, he cannot be wrong.

* * *

They are Sun and Moon, revolving forever in a futile chase. They will never stop, because gods do not tire, yet the entirety of the human race stands between them — what would they do without day and light, if even they could do without night and the tides?

Madara finds his destiny writ on an ancient tablet, comprehends more than ever his final purpose. If only he could make Hashirama see — there is no good reason Sun and Moon are kept apart, when combined they could shine brighter and achieve anything, everything. Hashirama could have his peace far and beyond Konohagakure, and Madara could have his vengeance upon death.

(He would be able to return his brother's gift two-fold, give him back his eyes and Tobirama's, too.)

Hashirama refuses, casts aside pearls for swine. Madara pities him and vows to bring eternal night — perhaps in the darkness the man will realise his wilful blindness and repent.

* * *

He discovers the creature boiling in its own red fury, tails curling and jowl dripping. The Kyuubi is no match for him — he has honed his hatred to be sunspot-black, and the demon cowers before the ink-and-fire of his eyes.

Still. Sentiment makes him weak. He walks his demon fox a ways from Konoha, some feeble part of him reluctant to damage the place, like a child preserving a sand castle.

(Never mind, that by building it near the sea, he has already doomed it to the demolition of the waves.)

They seal it away. Madara laughs, because while he could subdue the beast with a single look they have to cage it, compress it within skin and bones.

_It will burn the light out of you, woman_. He doesn't say anything, however, see no point in adding malice to truth, when truth speaks the loudest for itself.

* * *

For the first time in his life he is cold, as ice, as death.

(He is not dead, though, he was careful not to die.)

_It's the blood loss_, says the flat, rational part of his mind.

_Betrayal_, hisses his body, the raw edges of his wounds searing even as Hashirama's cells invade-conquer-divide his.

* * *

_Beside him. Hashirama's hair lengthens, his body stretches and grows into maturity. He peers down at his own hands — they are just as pale, but the fingers are longer, scarred, bloodied. _

_Yet the cave is the same, perhaps not as large from an adult perspective. _Come on_. He turns at Hashirama's voice, face tilted to the low timbre, marches with him as he always has, shoulder to shoulder. _

_The other man stops, unfamiliar heaviness on his brow. It drags his eyebrows down and makes him look older than he is. There is a hand in his hair (_don't touch my hair_, Madara would snarl at anyone except this man), a strained smile on that usually open face, _I'm so sorry_, a blade in his gut, tears on his lips (whose tears? they are so close it could be both), ice-fire in his veins, hate hate hate (love) in his (Izuna's) eyes and nothing has ever hurt quite as much._

* * *

He wakes, skin damp with fever, and realises he is in a cave. The irony folds him up, he shakes even as the humid walls absorb his rasps of laughter.

Madara lies in the dark. How had he ever thought he belonged anywhere else? To anyone but himself and the elemental abandon of the night?

He pokes at his wounds and finds them closed, the skin fresh. Power runs through his body, tingling along his bones, and he knows he has transcended.

One day, he will burst into supernova, envelop the world in his fire and outshine the Sun.

Then, then he will have mastered the fates and warped karma, shed all mortal trappings.

(Peace.)

* * *

**End Notes**:

A companion piece from Tobirama's point-of-view will be published in the (hopefully near) future, which will also clarify Izuna's characterisation.

Hashirama and Mito's daughter is an original character of my own creation. In keeping with ridiculous Senju naming traditions, Keta means a wooden column or beam usually used to support ceilings. She is their older child. (They must have had at least two, one before the founding of Konoha and one after.)


End file.
